The invention relates generally to smart manufacturing and more particularly to creating digital surrogates of a product during design, manufacturing and life-cycle use of the product.
The term “smart manufacturing” is generally understood to encompass a wide variety of model based engineering, system engineering and manufacturing technologies that characterization the digitization of manufacturing. This is also known as “digital thread” which provides for cradle to grave planning, design, manufacturing, monitoring, and maintenance of assets such as aircraft, spacecraft, land and sea vehicles, etc. Data is collected throughout the lifecycle of an asset, including design, manufacturing process and usage to create a “digital twin” of an asset. A digital twin can also be created for older legacy assets after manufacturing is complete. Another term for “digital twin” is “life cycle model.”
Typically, when manufacturing a complex asset such as an aircraft, for example, many experts in a wide variety of disciplines contribute to the end result. Providing a format and method of collecting and managing the data models and information generated by the different experts so that it is widely usable is critical to the overall success of smart manufacturing. Currently, there are problems with effective communication between designers and manufacturers of an asset, for example, and between manufacturers and inspectors as another example. Although ID tagging using, for example, two-dimensional bar codes or RFID tags, is known in the prior art, they are typically not miniaturized and are only employed at only a single discrete location on an asset.
In addition, prior art ID tags typically only include a part number or other identification. While the part number may be associated with data generated about the part, for example repairs or usage, the data itself is typically stored by users in a separate computer system or even on paper. Over the life cycle of a part or complete asset, the data may be stored in different locations or incompatible computer systems/software, thus becoming inaccessible to subsequent users.
Thus, a need exists for accurate and timely data pertinent to the asset to be collected and maintained in a way that is accessible to everyone working on the asset. There is also a need for distributed tags that provide complete information about individual parts of an asset even when only a portion of the part is available.